Hire test automation engineers

Hire Test Automation Engineers

Test Automation Engineers who have shipped before

A test automation engineer is the hire that turns releases from a weekend event into a button. Ours arrive with a repeatable first-month plan: pick the framework that fits your stack, wire it into CI, cover the critical paths, and hand your developers a structure they can extend. From $15/hour, month to month, interviewed by you.

We staff automation engineers across the stack: Playwright and Cypress for web, Selenium where a legacy suite already exists, Appium and device clouds for iOS and Android, REST and GraphQL API testing in code, contract tests between services, and load testing with k6 or JMeter. All of it runs in GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or whatever pipeline you already have, with flaky-test quarantine and reporting your team will actually read.

Typical engagement shapes: one SDET embedded in a product team that has shipped without automation (framework in month one, 60–80% critical-path coverage by month three); an automation lead who rebuilds a brittle Selenium suite into a maintainable pyramid; or a test engineer added to a <a href="/hire-dedicated-development-team">dedicated development team</a> so QA and delivery are under one contract. Manual and exploratory testing is covered by our <a href="/hire-qa-engineers">QA engineers</a>, and most teams pair one of each.

What a test automation engineer does in the first 90 days

The first month is framework and plumbing: choose Playwright for most modern web apps (Cypress if your team already knows it, Selenium only to extend an existing suite), set up page objects or component fixtures, seed test data, and get the suite running in CI with parallel workers and a flaky-test policy. Month two is coverage of the critical paths — sign-up, billing, the three workflows that generate revenue — plus API tests that run in seconds instead of minutes. Month three is handover and expansion: developers writing tests alongside features, mobile coverage with Appium if you have apps, and visual or accessibility checks where they pay off.

• Web: Playwright, Cypress, Selenium; cross-browser runs; visual regression where UI stability matters.
• Mobile: Appium, Detox, device clouds (BrowserStack, Sauce Labs) for iOS and Android.
• API and services: REST/GraphQL tests in code, contract testing (Pact), schema validation.
• Performance: k6 and JMeter load tests tied to release gates.
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI; parallelization, retries, reporting, quarantine.

Test automation engineers vs QA engineers vs SDETs

The titles overlap, so we hire for the work rather than the label. A test automation engineer or SDET writes code: frameworks, suites, CI integration, test infrastructure. A QA engineer owns quality end to end — test plans, exploratory sessions, release sign-off — and may or may not automate. Most product teams need both, in a ratio of about one automation engineer to one or two manual QA. If you are not sure which you need, start with the interview questions and first-week plan in how to hire QA engineers, or book a call and we will suggest a mix for your release cadence.

What test automation engineers cost in 2026

US SDETs run $110k–$160k in salary plus 25–30% overhead, and take 60–90 days to hire; agencies bill $90–$160/hour. Our test automation engineers are $15–$45/hour month to month, so a full-time engineer costs roughly $2.4k–$7.2k a month and a 40-hour-a-month retainer that keeps an existing suite healthy is $600–$1,800. The broader decision math — when augmentation beats hiring — is in senior software engineer staff augmentation; the service terms are on our staff augmentation page.